We’ve tried to be very, very good at The Oldham Era this year. We might have been naughty once or twice, but hopefully you’ll embrace the holiday spirit and forgive us. We have a few things to ask you for this year — hopefully they’ll fit under our tree...

• a solution to the frequent crashes on I-71 at I-265 and the traffic backups they cause — this is a gift for all our friends who work in Louisville!

• another great season for all of the Little Leaguers in our fine county. The Boys of Summer locked us in as Little League fans for life.

• an end to nepotismallegations (two stories) in county government, because there’s plenty of talent to hire outside your own family.

• a big fence around Oldham County so parents can’t fraudulently send their students to Oldham schools. We’ll still keep Assistant Superintendent Dan Orman on border patrol.

• a helicopter for our newsroom – handy for times when a train derails, a drunk driver starts firing a weapon at police while driving down Ky. 146 or a building collapses with a 25-year-old trapped in the rubble. We’re still thanking our lucky stars that everyone lived through those emergencies.

• elves to lend a hand while local business owners expand their services and extend their hours. Wouldn’t it be great to see Main Street shops open late, and on Mondays, too?

• an app for Judge-Executive David Voegele’s phone that prompts him to consult with fiscal court before making a big purchase, like a guardrail for a state road.

• a solution for Ironman Louisville that brings the event to Oldham County and boosts the local economy for a day but doesn’t landlock residents.

• a vacation for Mike and Vonnie Glover, the couple responsible for the light show on the courthouse lawn. They’re spending all of Christmas break greeting revelers, so at some point, they need a Christmas break of their own.

• a box of purple markers, the color that will signify a new Era in 2012.

• stock in Apple Inc. for the staff of The Oldham Era. After reading all of the Letters to Santa and hundreds of requests for iFones, eypads and ipodes from the next generation, we’re thinking iStuff is really catching on.

• a pedestrian pedway for all of the South Oldham middle and high school students who need a safe path to McDonalds, Hometown Pizza and now, Taco Bell.

• something special for our 3,048 Facebook fans, near and far. They’re like family – they cheer us, they jeer us and they tell us their best secrets and their neighbors’ best secrets.

• a treadmill for our office. We rejoiced Big R’s and Shannon’s Bar-B-Q opened across the street, but now our skinny jeans are now just jeans.

• a relocation package for all of the deer living in the median of I-71 to move to the North Pole. Surely Santa could use a few freelance reindeer for his crew. It would make a dangerous stretch of roadway easier to navigate.

• more signs marking Railroad Avenue in Crestwood as the worst place in the United States for a semi to cross the tracks. We suggest “SEMI DRIVERS: You’re taking a turn for the worst.”

• and last but not least, glad tidings for our subscribers, our advertisers, our supporters and co-workers who make The Oldham Era possible. We couldn’t do it without them, and we wouldn’t want to, either.